Wilson was skiing at friends when a member of the crew got his backpack strap stuck in the chairlift as he tried to unload. The lift dragged him back down the hill.

“We were on the chair lift behind so we unloaded and ran down the hill to help him when we realized the worst possible thing had happened,” Wilson wrote. “The backpack had wrapped around his neck and he was unconscious, dangling 10 feet above the snow.”

Wilson said he and his friends tried to build a human pyramid to get to him but they couldn’t.

Panic was becoming terror as we realized we were about to watch our friend die in front of our helpless eyes,” Wilson wrote.

Then, Wilson had what he called a “Eureka” moment.

He climbed the lift tower above the chair and onto the cable, then slid down to his friend.